Top 10 Most Powerful Black Persons In The UK of 2022

Most Powerful Black Britons In 2022

The Powerlist is a list of the 100 most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom. The list is updated annually and has been published in book format by Powerful Media since 2007. The Powerlist is not limited to British-born citizens and includes immigrants to the UK.

The list was first created in 2007 by Michael Eboda, then editor of the New Nation, a weekly newspaper published in the UK for the Black British community, as a way to profile and celebrate influential Black Britons, and inspire and influence the next generation. The first Powerlist was compiled after six months of research and debate where 400 people of influence were whittled down to 50 women and 50 men, then ranked into respective top tens with the results announced in August 2007.

During the first few editions, separate top 10 rankings were produced for both Female and Male candidates and top ranking individuals could continue to be ranked the following year. From 2012 the 50 highest rated nominees, along with updates on the previous year's Powerlistees from rank 2–100, are then ranked by an independent panel in the summer, with the list being produced each autumn. Each year's highest-ranking individual is added to the Powerlist Hall of Fame.

Take a look at these top 10 most powerful black Britons in this Powerlist in 2022 below.

The list of top 10 most powerful black Britons in 2022

10. Jacqueline McKenzie

9. Richard Iferenta

8. Lord Simon Woolley

7. Michaela Coel

6. Steven Bartlett

5. Prof Kevin Fenton

4. Daniel Kaluuya

3. Anne Mensah

2. Marcus Rashford

1. Jacky Wright

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Who are the top 10 most powerful black Britons in 2022?

10. Jacqueline McKenzie

Photo: The Guardian

Jacqueline (Jacqui) McKenzie is a British human rights lawyer specialising in migration, asylum and refugee law. Her legal career encompasses practice in the areas of civil liberties, crime and immigration with solicitors Birnberg Peirce and Partners, and since 2010 running her own immigration consultancy, McKenzie Beute and Pope (MBP), having previously spent more than a decade in senior local government roles with responsibility for equalities, community development, communications and urban development. She is the founder of the Organisation of Migration Advice and Research, which works pro bono with refugees and women who have been trafficked to the UK. McKenzie has won recognition for her work seeking justice for victims of the Windrush scandal that initially gained notoriety in 2018.

In 2020, McKenzie Beute and Pope was chosen by the Black Solicitors Network (BSN) as "Small Law Firm of the Year".

McKenzie was recognised for her work fighting for justice after the Windrush Scandal in the annual Powerlist, ranking at number seven in the Top 10 of the Powerlist 2021, compiling the most influential people of African, African American and African Caribbean heritage in the UK. At Powerful Media's Virtual Black Excellence Awards in November 2020, McKenzie was presented with the #Powerlist2021 Humanitarian Award for her work seeking justice for those affected by the Windrush scandal.

9. Richard Iferenta

SAMOS CAPITAL GROUP

Richard is a Partner and Vice-Chair at KPMG in the UK specialising in taxation in the Financial Services Sector. Richard joined KPMG in 2000 and has been a partner since 2004.

Prior to that he worked as a solicitor in the Tax Department at Simmons & Simmons (the City law firm) and as a VAT specialist with Deloitte, Ernst & Young and also worked for HM Customs & Excise (as it was then called). Richard also practised as a barrister in Nigeria for a couple of years before moving to the United Kingdom.

Richard supports financial institutions with the day-to-day intricacies of their indirect tax affairs including advising on transactions, VAT recovery and understanding the boundaries of the VAT legislation which sometimes includes challenging HMRC’s interpretation of the law. Richard is well known on the conference circuit and has written numerous articles.

Richard is the partner sponsor for KPMG’s African Caribbean network. This role gives Richard an opportunity to support and mentor colleagues with an Afro-Caribbean background. It also gives him an opportunity to positively engage, shape and drive KPMG’s diversity and inclusion strategy.

On 1 October 2020 Richard was appointed to Vice-Chair at KPMG responsible for supporting business and broader society on the big issues that matter

8. Lord Simon Woolley

Photo: The Independent

Simon Andrew Woolley, Baron Woolley of Woodford, Kt (born 24 December 1961) is a political and equalities activist. He is the founder and director of Operation Black Vote and Trustee of the charity Police Now. Woolley has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since October 2019. He was Chair of the Government of the United Kingdom Race Disparity Unit Advisory Group until July 2020. In March 2021, his appointment as Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge was announced.

Along with former Downing Street advisors Nick Timothy and Will Tanner, Woolley is seen as the inspiration and one of the architects for the Government of the United Kingdom Race Disparity Unit, and served as the Advisory Chair. He has worked with the Open Source Foundation on their global drugs policy projects. He secured £90 million of funding to encourage disadvantaged young people to work. When Operation Black Vote started, there were four black or minority ethnic members of parliament; as of 2019, there are over 50. He has written for The Guardian, Huffington Post and The Independent.

Woolley has been included in the Powerlist every year since 2012. He was selected as one of the Evening Standard's Most Influential People in 2010. In 2010 and 2011 he was selected as one of The Daily Telegraph's 100 Most Influential People. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate for his equality efforts from the University of Westminster.

Woolley received a knighthood (Kt) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for his services to race equality. He said he had to think hard about accepting the honour: "Many black or minority ethnic individuals have to think hard about whether to take an award or not, particularly those offered an award with empire in its title ... It's a difficult choice and whatever decision they make I fully support them. In the case of the knighthood, I didn't have to make that exact call. It has more to do with medieval times and the 13th century than empire".

Woolley was nominated for a life peerage to sit as a Crossbencher in the House of Lords by Prime Minister Theresa May in her 2019 Resignation Honours List. He was created Baron Woolley of Woodford, of Woodford in the London Borough of Redbridge, on 14 October 2019. He has sat on the Lord's Youth Unemployment Committee since 28 January 2021.

7. Michaela Coel

Photo: Vulture

Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson (born 1987), known professionally as Michaela Coel, is a British actress, screenwriter, director, producer and singer. She is best known for creating and starring in the E4 sitcom Chewing Gum (2015–2017), for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance; and the BBC One/HBO comedy-drama series I May Destroy You (2020) for which she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress in 2021. For her work on the latter, Coel made history as the first Black woman to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards.

Coel is also known for her work in other Netflix productions, including guest-starring in the series Black Mirror (2016–2017), starring as Kate Ashby in the series Black Earth Rising (2018), and as Simone in the film Been So Long (2018).

In July 2021, Coel was cast in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Coel's first book, Misfits: a Personal Manifesto is scheduled to be published simultaneously in the UK and the USA on 7 September 2021 by Ebury Press. Based on her MacTaggart lecture at 2018's Edinburgh Festival, which touches on Coel's experiences with racism and misogyny, her publisher described the book as "a powerful manifesto on how speaking your truth and owning your differences can transform your life".

6. Steven Bartlett

Steven Bartlett (born August 26, 1992 in Botswana) is an entrepreneur who established the Social Chain group, a group which holds over 20 companies specializing in different fields.

Bartlett was born on August 26, 1992 in Botswana. At the age of three, Bartlett and his family moved to the United Kingdom and lived in Moss Side, Manchester. Steven entered the Plymstock School in Plymouth, United Kingdom in 2004 and graduated from the school. He then continued his studies at the Manchester Metropolitan University to pursue a degree in businesses a year later.

In November 2014, Bartlett and Dominic launched Social Chain with a financial backing of almost £300,000 from investors. Initially, Social Chain was criticized by its competitors for its failure to disclose its advertisement. Bartlett claimed that the problem occurred due to his misunderstandings of advertising rules. Later on, the business grew in size and achieved the entire annual turnover of 2015 in the several months of 2016. The group became a public company on October 2019, with Bartlett announcing that the company shares are traded in XETRA/Frankfurt. The group now consists of twenty different companies, specializing on different fields.

Currently, Social Chain owns over 200 accounts. Some examples are "Fitness Motivation" in Twitter with almost two million followers and "Love Food" with almost seven million followers.

Through his Social Chain, Bartlett and his partners was often described as “the kids who decide what all the other kids talk about” and the “social media illuminati”. Several Social Chain's account were later found out by BuzzFeed News to plagiarize old posts in the internet.

In 2020, Bartlett left Social Chain and joined Huel, a turnover food replacement company, as a non-executive director.

5. Prof Kevin Fenton

Photo: London Gov

Kevin Andrew Fenton FFPH (born 19 December 1966) is a regional director at Public Health England. He was formerly director of the United States National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2011 and 2012, Fenton appeared on The Root's "The Root 100" list of "black achievers and influencers between the ages of 25 and 45".

Fenton left CDC, and the US, in 2012 to join the new English national public health body, Public Health England, as head of its directorate of health improvement and population healthcare, renamed health and wellbeing shortly before April 2013's official commencement of the organisation. As of 2015, Fenton was paid a salary of between £175,000 and £179,999 by the department, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time.

In February 2017, he was announced as Southwark Council's new Director of Health and Wellbeing, working on secondment from Public Health England.

As of 2020, Fenton is Public Health England's Regional Director of Public Health for London. His work in this role combatting the COVID-19 pandemic was recognised by ranking second in the 2021 edition of the annual Powerlist of the most influential Black Britons. Fenton's work during the pandemic focused on supporting hard-hit BAME communities, including two reports highlighting the health inequalities faced by minority British people.

4. Daniel Kaluuya

Photo: Deadline

Daniel Kaluuya, (born February 24, 1989, London, England), British actor who was known for the arresting authenticity of his performances in a variety of roles.

Kaluuya was born in London to Ugandan parents, and he grew up in a council estate (public housing project) in Camden living with his mother. He wrote a play when he was nine years old and soon began taking classes in improvisational acting at the Anna Scher Theatre. He later also became involved in the Hampstead Theatre’s youth program. As a teen, Kaluuya was cast in the controversial BBC movie Shoot the Messenger (2006), about a Black teacher accused of anti-Black racism. The following year he began writing for and acting in Skins (2007–10, 2013), a popular TV series about a group of young teenagers; he played the part of Posh Kenneth. In 2008 he appeared in the stage comedy Oxford Street at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

Kaluuya’s work in Skins led to guest roles in numerous popular series, including sketch comedy shows. He was a cast member in the sitcom FM (2009) and in the horror comedy Psychoville (2009–11). In addition, he returned to the Royal Court, where he won rave reviews for his performance as a young boxer in the play Sucker Punch (2010). In 2011 Kaluuya had a prominent role in the miniseries The Fades and starred in an episode of the dystopian sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror. His attempts at breaking into movies yielded small parts in the crime drama Welcome to the Punch and the crime comedy Kick-Ass 2 (both 2013).

3. Anne Mensah

Photo: Financial Time

Anne Mensah is Vice President, Original Series at Netflix. Prior to this, she was Director of Drama and Sky Studios at Sky UK. Prior to joining Sky, Anne served as Head of Independent Drama at the BBC as well as Head of Drama for BBC Scotland. Anne has commissioned a wide variety of internationally acclaimed dramas such as Wallander with Kenneth Branagh, Patrick Melrose starring Benedict Cumberbatch for Sky/Showtime, John Ridley’s political drama Guerrilla and the Sky/HBO drama, Chernobyl. Anne’s commissions have been awarded multiple Emmys, RTS and BAFTA awards, as well as Broadcasting Press Guild, Globe de Cristal and Golden Globe awards and nominations. Formerly, Anne was Managing Director at Noel Gay Television, where she worked on the Royal Television Society award winning documentary, Windrush (BBC2). Anne sits on the Board of Into Film, an educational charity as well as the Board of ScreenSkills, a charity dedicated to training in the television and film sector. She is an independent Governor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Anne was named as one of Hollywood Reporter’s "25 Most Powerful Women in Global Television" in 2017. Anne graduated from Exeter University with a BA in American and Commonwealth Arts, 1st Class Honours. She is a member of the 2018 Class of Henry Crown Fellows within the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute.

2. Marcus Rashford

Marcus Rashford MBE (born 31 October 1997) is an English professional footballer and activist who plays as a forward for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team.

A Manchester United player from the age of seven, Rashford scored two goals on both his first-team debut against Midtjylland in the UEFA Europa League in February 2016 and his Premier League debut against Arsenal three days later. He also scored in his first Manchester derby, as well as on his EFL Cup and UEFA Champions League debuts. With United, Rashford has so far won the FA Cup, EFL Cup, FA Community Shield and Europa League.

Rashford scored on his England debut in May 2016, becoming the youngest English player to score in his first senior international match. He played at the UEFA Euro 2016 as the tournament's youngest player, and also represented England at both the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

He is a campaigner against racism, homelessness and child hunger in the United Kingdom. Rashford has been praised for using his platform to be a political activist and philanthropist to drive societal change. For his efforts, he has received widespread praise, and has been recognised for his efforts from organisations both in and outside of sport, and was subject of a mural painted by street artist Akse in Withington.

1. Jacky Wright

Photo: Financial Time

Jacky Wright is a British technology executive, Chief Digital Officer and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft US.

Jacky Wright was born in London, and grew up in Tottenham. She has spent much of her career in the United States.

Wright worked at BP, General Electric, and Andersen Consulting before continuing her career at Microsoft. She served as corporate vice president for core platform engineering at Microsoft before joining HM Revenue & Customs on a two-year "loan arrangement" in 2017. In this role she led on several areas including digital transformation, data strategy, and governance. She was Chief Digital and Information Officer at HMRC until October 2019, when she returned to Microsoft.

During her career she has advocated for diversity in technology and in the workplace and contributed to organisational initiatives on this issue. She has sat on the board of Year Up, an organisation that supports young adults in skill building, and on the Women's Innovation Council who aim to improve involvement of women in science and technology careers.

Wright was listed at number 6 in the Powerlist 2018 rankings of the most influential black people in the UK, and at number 4 in the Powerlist 2019 rankings and the Powerlist 2020 rankings.

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